The Genesee/Wyoming Music Educators announce that 38 local students will be performing at three music festivals in November and December.

Miranda Graham (chorus-alto) from Le Roy has been accepted to Conference All State that will be held in early December. This is the highest choral honor for vocalists in New York. Miranda was chosen from a large field of students due to her high score at State Solo Festival last spring. Dillon Hirsch (saxophone) from Elba was chosen as an alternate.

Thirty-six other students were chosen to represent their schools at Area All State, which is a group of select singers from nine surrounding counties. All students had to audition at a state solo festival held late last spring.

These festivals will take place for seventh- through ninth-graders (jr. high
orchestra/chorus/band) Nov. 2-3, and for 10th-12th-graders (sr. high orchestra/chorus/band) Nov. 16-17.

Thank you to an anonymous friend who sent us this link to a page of photographs taken at St. Joe's Parade this past weekend. We were unable to make it to the festivities, so we're grateful that someone else took the initiative to document the occasion and get us involved in sharing the experience.

In fact, this is a perfect example of how the community can help make its own news. We're here to get the ball rolling, but this project we call The Batavian really works best with your participation.

I've tacked up a couple photos to the post here. For now, you can see the rest at the photographer's Flickr site. Hopefully, we'll get all of the photos loaded into our own account so you can access them with a simple click of the Photos button up near the top of the page.

If you have some photos of Batavia that you would like to share with your fellow residents, please don't hesitate to drop us a line. As always, I can be reached at philip (at) thebatavian (dot) com.